Cultural causes of environmental problems: a Wittgensteinian approach to social action

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Henry, John

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Crozier, Ivan

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Arponen, Vesa Petri Juhani

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2013-09-13T10:56:15Z

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2013-09-13T10:56:15Z

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2012-11-28

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http://hdl.handle.net/1842/7779

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This thesis develops a multidisciplinarily grounded account of the cultural causes
of environmental problems discussed as a question in philosophical and sociological
theory of social action. The approach is articulated by an original reading of
Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy.
Part 1 of the thesis critically discusses a prominent view of the cultural causes
found in environmentalism and environmental history with significant popular
appeal. In this view, labelled the ideological approach, the human nature relationship
is characterised essentially by our culture's alleged disrespectful, manipulative
and materialistic attitude to nature that is said to have been internalised
by the modern human being and to fundamentally drive our ecologically consequential
activities. An alternative organisatory approach is suggested based on
the view that due to division of labour of culturally and geographically dispersed
masses, as well as the everyday character of activities in terms of which we collectively
cause environmental problems in global industrial market society, no general
ideological source of social action can plausibly be posited. An organisatory
approach to the human environmental burden as a function of the collective performance
by masses of a shared organisation of activity on a recursive, everyday
basis is a more realistic account of the intensity of human environmental impact.
Part 2 argues that the ideological approach in environmentalism and beyond
can be seen to imply a form of collectivism also found in many classics of Wittgensteinian
philosophy and social theory, an important common denominator being
their ontological focus on the mental source of social action in shared conceptual
schemes, normative orientations and the like. By contrast, in the Wittgenstein
reading developed in this thesis, his perspective was non-ontological, viewing social
activity as developing processes not defined by their mental source in shared
conceptions but by their organisation. Social life is viewed as being based on
agreement in form of life, that is, in organisation of human activity.
The thesis is a rare and original attempt to make philosophy relevant in the
discussion of a pressing contemporary problem that also advances Wittgenstein-scholarship
to a novel area.

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Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)

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en

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The University of Edinburgh

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Wittgenstein

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nature

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environment

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social action

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dc.title

Cultural causes of environmental problems: a Wittgensteinian approach to social action